In U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,624,622 and 5,741,574 incorporated herein by this reference, there are disclosed truss reinforced foam core sandwich structures wherein a plurality of pins are disposed in a foam core and the extending ends of the pins are then driven into composite face sheets on each side of the foam core. See also U.S. Pat. No. 5,736,222 also incorporated herein by this reference.
One potential drawback with these structures is that an autoclave must generally be used to obtain the pressure required to drive the pin ends into the face sheets.
An autoclave adds significantly to the cost of manufacturing such sandwich structures and for large structures the use of an auto-lave may be impractical.